


Turning Wheel

by Nyanoka



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Mental Illness, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26413687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanoka/pseuds/Nyanoka
Summary: The end draws near on the fairy tale, and the princess hasn’t been saved.
Kudos: 8





	Turning Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> We'll get back to the more "normal" content soon(ish).
> 
> Though, I do like to foil my serious!Leon and serious!Sonia with each other hence why they both run on fairy tale themes. This isn't connected to "Brocéliande" though.

The princess is always saved at the end, knight errant riding forward on a white steed, sword sheath’d and stain’d with the blood of beasts and hands soon whisking her away home and to a loving family—toward a dream without end and an ending without suffering, without voice and without uncertainty.

That is how the story is supposed go, how the stories of her childhood had gone—movies sanitized and words whispered comfortingly in the moonlit world of a child’s bedroom, walls messily decorated with crayon drawings and each exonerated as stars are, as children’s achievements often are.

The princess is supposed to wait, confined to her tower as green spring passes into warm summer and warm summer fades into cool autumn—daffodils dying and rotting before being eventually met with burial of white, snow overturning everything.

For her hero, for her safety, for the whim of some other thing or being—always held up as a prize, a commodity for someone else other than herself—the princess always waits, guarded or held captive by some monster, some mongrel beast given task by some unseen force or simply existing to give worth to the girl sitting above in her stone-walled room and weaving upon her loom.

She doesn’t suffer. She only waits: perhaps sleeping, perhaps reading, but never suffering.

That is how the fairy tale should go—princess adored and wanted and life given worth. Even if she couldn’t act as she wanted, she, at the very least, meant something, could wait for something—some promise of a certain future, some promise of being beloved, some promise of contentment.

Her future is set in stone, happiness guaranteed upon the final turn of the page and the thump of a closing book, all loose ends severed. Even if she doesn’t know the exact specifics of her own fate, she knows her waiting will end, that her patience, her perseverance, will be rewarded.

The princess isn’t supposed to suffer, isn’t supposed to be left alone in her tower to rot as the world passes around her, pale hand reaching forward from the window of her tower and toward the indifferent sun.

Even in the reimaginings of the present, she doesn’t suffer, isn’t destined to rot as the daffodils below do. She isn't destined to be buried beneath the rose bushes. Instead, she saves herself—clever as her would-be prince, stronger than any looming monster, and certain of her own future.

That isn’t how the fairy tales of her childhood had gone or how even the fairy tales of now go.

 _This_ isn’t how the stories, the promises of her childhood, are supposed to go—freedom without purpose, suffering without meaning, and adulthood confined within the limitations of her head.

She isn’t supposed to suffer. She isn’t supposed to rot on the inside, voice hoarse and thorns prickling against her heart and underneath her eyelids with each blink and each nightly sleep.

There is no prince, no valiant savior, no killable monster, teeth bared and monstrousness given physical form.

Instead, there is nothing to slay, no _beast_ to slay, nothing but the thrum within her head, song beating with each hum of her heart and vines tightening with each gasp and breath, each night spent alone surrounded by towers of dogeared books or simply lying upon the white silk of her bed, mind suffocating with each passing second.

There is no goal, no reason, no purpose for her wait.

She is the princess, and yet, she isn’t.

But still, she isn’t evil, isn’t cruel. She isn’t someone _deserving_ to be punished. She isn’t the vengeful godmother, the jealous stepsisters, or even some lowly henchman ordered to his task and punished along with them.

Instead, there is no purpose to everything—to the faint thrum within her head, the curling thorns around her heart, or the envy she feels.

Certainly, she knows she shouldn’t be envious—princesses aren’t supposed to do anything more than wait—but she is. She’s envious of everyone around her, not of their accomplishments—she has a few herself even if they, unlike wine, don’t sate anything within her head—but of their happiness, in the ease which it comes, and in their ignorance.

They don’t hear the thrum in her head, do nothing outside of the occasional inquiry upon her health, nor do they feel the tightening of thorns, needling as always.

It isn’t valiant—isn’t kind—what she feels, but she feels it all the same, wonders the same roaming questions every night.

Should they not feel the same as she does? Should they not be the ones suffering in the princess’s stead? That is certainly the role of the knight, the prince and savior meant to prove his worth and then win her hand in marriage.

There is no marriage—no ascertained connection—either, nothing to still the beating song or to dull the ache, the prick of the spinning wheel’s spindle.

No kiss, no savior, and no betrothal ring or necklace—copper or silver or perhaps even gold.

No, that isn’t quite right. There is a necklace, but it, much like herself, isn’t quite fit for the fairy tale, not for one of the ones from her childhood anyhow.

Brown and dull and frayed and more fit for tying a boat to a dock post than for any betrothal, imagined or otherwise. It isn’t quite like the fairy tales, but nothing quite is.

The height isn’t quite right either, too low, not enough for a quick snap, but at the very least, it’s enough.

But still, she isn’t evil, isn’t cruel. She makes sure to set her affairs in order, as much as they can be anyhow. Her shoes are set near the door, sandals placed neatly next to one another rather than mismatched, left one lost before midnight; her room is tidied, walls bare and floors cleaned of discarded clothing; and her Pokémon loaned out for the night under the guise of a playdate.

It isn’t ideal—why would it be?—but it is sorted, affairs put into order and everything set, knots tied, necklace given, and loose ends almost finally nipped.

After all, in a fairy tale, there are no loose ends once the story finishes, only certainties.

At the very least, she could consider herself a princess then.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm like halfway done with the "less depressing" fic, and that'll go up eventually.
> 
> Originally, I was actually going to go with The Little Mermaid (Hans Andersen Christensen version since I love his works), but I decided against it and went for a general approach.


End file.
